Rivendicare il futuro, costruire il passato e fingersi una nazione

Claiming a future, constructing a past and pretending to be a nation. The author believes that the main sources of identity in the Arab-Muslim world come from a distant past. He surveys the epochs of Islam, illustrating how the claims of its ethnic-religious comunities have manifested themselves, evolved, died out and reappeared in the 19th century as a vacuum, which the Islamic movements are setting out to fill with old ideas and new technologies.